Dwight Howard on leaving Orlando: “What happened to LeBron, I don’t want that to happen to me”
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During his tenure with the Orlando Magic from 2004 to 2012, Dwight Howard truly stood out as the star in the league, garnering numerous All-Star selections and earning widespread acclaim as the league’s top center. His remarkable stretch from 2009 to 2011 saw him capture three consecutive Defensive Player of the Year honors.
He was successful with the team, but Howard thought the Magic could have done a better job in bouncing back after the 2009 Finals when they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers. The star center wanted to get traded to the Brooklyn Nets, but Orlando sent him to the Lakers, where he would become a flop and a league’s laughing stock due to a back injury.
“When we went to the Finals the next year, they kinda broke up all the players. They all got traded, they brought Vince in and other pieces. I thought that was our year, that year, we went to the Finals, and I thought next year if we kept the same squad,” Dwight said on the OGs. “I went to Otis Smith, I was like, hey Otis, I know this is a tough thing, but I would like to be traded. Can you just do this privately? I don’t want what happened to LeBron, I don’t want that to happen to me.”
The snowball effect of the trade request
Even if Howard wanted to keep it private, news like that would become more prominent. After he made the request, Dwight felt he slighted the organization and the fans, but that is how the business goes in the NBA.
He did not want to go “The Decision” route that LeBron took in free agency, so he quietly requested a trade, but that did not end well. It was a messy situation because the Magic organization felt betrayed when the big man came up to them, according to Jameer Nelson.
“It was a divided room. Some guys on the team were like, ‘He needs to go because it was too much of a distraction,’ the organization basically said, ‘We need him.’ I was in the middle like if that’s what he wants to do, it’s a business, he got to do what he got to do for his career,” Jameer said on Real Ones.
Dwight’s desire for a trade was fulfilled in the summer of 2012, yet his initial tenure in the City of Angels faced challenges. Despite stints with various teams, he finally achieved his long-awaited championship dream during his second stint with the Lakers in 2020.
Both organizations still struggled after the trade
Even though it was a massive trade, the Lakers and Magic did not benefit much from the transaction. D12 left the Lakers organization just a season later to go to the Houston Rockets, while the Magic got Nikola Vucevic as the primary piece. Vooch became the focal point in Orlando but never got off the ground as a true contender.
Fortunately, the Magic received compensation when they traded Vooch nearly a decade later to the Chicago Bulls, acquiring draft picks. One of these picks was used to select Franz Wagner, a cornerstone for the Magic’s future alongside Paolo Banchero, marking a positive turn from the failed Howard trade.